The Theoretical Study of Motivational Transfer and Entertainment Use in Self-study CALL
The Theoretical Study of Motivational Transfer and Entertainment Use in Self-study CALL
Keywords:
English as a lingua franca; communication strategies
Matthew Watterson
Macquarie University
This study is aimed at describing and interpreting the communication strategies (CS) used by speakers of English as an international lingua franca (EILF). The participants in the research were members of an EILF focus group that met once a week during the northern summer of 2006, near a university in Seoul, South Korea. The group included one Mongolian and five Korean university students.
The focus groupis meetings were videotaped and transcriptions from three recorded encounters, totalling about two-and-a-half hours of data, were scanned for the presence of CS. These CS were then described and interpreted using the methods of conversation analysis (CA). Participants were replayed parts of the data and interviewed about their motivations in using different CS at particular moments in the talk. The analysed data is discussed under five rubrics based on interrelated aspects of CS use: locating, avoiding, replacing, fixing and ignoring troubles.
The findings indicate that the participantsi motivations in using different CS largely centre on striking a balance between the competing demands of linguistic clarity and pragmatic concerns about i«facei. Other possible factors influencing CS selection that were identified include: interpersonal factors such as group size; the level of discourse at which a trouble occurs; the location of a trouble in the development of a topic; and the perception of the current interaction as i«small talki or otherwise.
Recommendations are made for future, more focused research that could further explore the tentative findings of the current study.
Category: Thesis
